Part 5

Tashkent is the capital of Russian Central Asia, and is a well-built city extending over an enormous area. It occupies a space something like a fifth of that which London occupies. There is no crowding anywhere. The houses, for fear of earthquakes, have in no case more than two storeys, and seldom that. There are many public gardens, where you may sit at white-spread tables and drink _narzan_ or koumis in the dense shade of thickly foliaged trees. Tashkent is a city on an oasis. It has wonderful vegetation. Along all the streets run brisk streams of fresh water, conducted on the irrigation system from the river. There is a noise all day and all night of running water, so that if you wake in the hush of night and listen to it, you may imagine for a moment that you are living in a village among hills aleak with thousands of cascades and rivulets. How useful is this water-supply to Tashkent! There is no need for water-carts; strong natives are employed with buckets to scoop water from the streams and fling it across the cobbles all day. So effectual is their work that there is never a whiff of dust, and, indeed, it is occasionally necessary to wear galoshes, the streets having been made so muddy. The streams freshen the air, keep down the dust, give life to the lofty poplars of the many avenues, and they are the convenient element for thousands of Mohammedans to wash in before saying their prayers. The streams make the town into the country. As you walk down the pavemented High Street, and look in at the truly fine shops of Tashkent, your attention may still be diverted by the dainty water wagtail that is nesting near by, and as you wait for the electric tram you observe the small heath butterfly flitting along, as much at home as upon the mountains. At night, whilst all the Russians, in white clothes, parade up and down and gossip, and the moon looks down from above the gigantic trees of the gardens and the main streets, the streams still take attention, for there proceeds from them a tumultuous, everlasting, raging chorus of frog-calling.

Up the many long streets from the old town to the new come strings of gentle-looking camels--low-backed, single-humped, long-necked camels, with sometimes as many as twenty necklaces of blue beads from below their ears. The horses, too, are much adorned with carpet cloths and coloured strings that keep the flies away. The high-wheeled carts of Bokhara have become too common in Tashkent to attract attention. Altogether, indeed, the Orient strikes one less romantically here than in Bokhara. The native population of 200,000 is very dirty and disorderly; the women, behind their veils, not nearly so strict or so careful; the houses not so well kept--all in dirt and ruin. On the roofs of the mosques are thousands of red poppies in bloom, and occasionally the crane’s nest is to be seen on the tops of the towers whence the muezzin calls to prayer. There are booths of coppersmiths and carpet-makers and silk-workers, and caravanserai where all manner of picturesque Moslems are to be seen lying on divans and carpets or squatting over basins of tea; but all is second-hand and down-at-heel after Bokhara. With the coming of the Russians the angel of death has breathed on all that was once the grandeur of the Orient at Tashkent. Once there were no Russians in the land, and then what is now old Tashkent was the only Tashkent; it was a great Moslem city that could be pointed to geographically as such. But as the fine Russian streets were laid down, and the large shops opened, and the cathedrals were built, and the gardens laid out, the old uphill-and-down-dale labyrinth of the Eastern city slowly changed to a curiosity and an anachronism. It faded before the eyes. The next year the Russians were to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the conquest of the town--only the fiftieth! Poor old Tashkent, slipping into the sere and yellow leaf, passing away even as one looked, always decreasing whilst the new town is always increasing--there is much pathos in its destiny.

The natives are mostly Sarts, an absolutely unambitious people, honest, quiet, sober. Scarcely any crime ever takes place among them. A week in the year they are said to go off on a spree and get rid of the sin in them. For the rest of the time they are like lambs. They are uninterested in everything except small deals in the wares they make or sell. Their wives have rings in their nostrils for adornment--so I observed when the sun shone brightly on their black veils. A strange sight the electric tram which goes from the old town to the new and back again--crowded with men in white turbans and long robes and with Eastern women in their veils.

The foundation of the society of new Tashkent is laid by the regiments quartered there, and the fine shops exist chiefly for the custom of officers and their wives. A Grand Duke, who was banished for giving a Crown jewel to a favourite lady, lives here in exile, but he is an aged man now and receives few guests. High official personages constantly visit the colony, and consequently stay at Tashkent. The whole atmosphere is military, and there is an unusual smartness everywhere. Especially do you notice how well dressed the women are at the theatres and in the gardens, and the men accompanying them nearly all wear the sword. The middle-class Russian is out of sight, and the peasant labourer is rare, owing to the fact that the Sarts work at 9d. a day, but the Russian at 1s. or 1s. 3d. There is, however, a dandy Armenian element; young hawkers and shoeblacks and barbers who appear in the evening in white collars and cheap serges, with combed locks under felt hats, with canes in their hands.

Tashkent has now many schools, from the important Corpus, the military college where officers’ sons are educated, to the little native school where the Russian schoolmaster tries to give Russian to the Sart. I visited the splendid military school, and was only sorry to be too late in the season to see an hour of Russian football, the game being very popular with the boys. Most of the professors at this school are officers, and I met a charming staff-captain who had known several English correspondents during the war in Manchuria. The teacher of French gave me some interesting photographs.

There are six cinema shows at Tashkent, two theatres, an open-air theatre, a skating rink, and many small diversions. The native turns up in the cinema, and there are generally long lines of turbaned figures in the front of the theatre. At the real theatres it is necessarily those who know Russian who take the seats. At the open-air theatre they play _The Taming of the Shrew_, at the Coliseum the _Doll’s House_ and Artsibasheff’s _Jealousy_. The town has two newspapers, and on the day on which I arrived I found that the leading article of the _Courier of Turkestan_ was entitled “The State of Affairs in Ulster.” All Europe seemed to have its eyes on our politics, and Europe extends now as far east as Tashkent, though it is of “Central Asia” that that city claims to be the capital.

A wonderful place Tashkent. Cherries ripen there by the 1st of May, strawberries are seven copecks a pound in mid-May. Everything ripens three weeks earlier than in Russia proper. It is a fresh, fragrant city--an interesting curiosity among the cities of the world. The Russians have in it a city worth possessing. It must be said they have done their best to possess it, not merely in the letter of the law, but by improving it and governing it and giving it a Russian atmosphere. Despite camels and mosques, and natives in their turbans, and the sad call of the muezzin, you feel all the time as you go up and down the streets of Tashkent that you are in Russia.

The Kaufmann Square is, I suppose, the noblest position in the new city, all the avenues and prospects being used to frame the monument which stands there. This is the statue of General Kaufmann, who took possession of the land for the Russians. On one side of the monument is a fierce, dark, enormous, two-headed eagle in stone. But between its claws this year a dove had its nest. From behind the eagle General von Kaufmann stands and looks over his new-conquered country. On the other side of the monument there is the following inscription:

“I pray you bury me here that everyone may know that here is true Russian earth in which no Russian need be ashamed to lie.”

(_From a letter of_ GENERAL KAUFMANN, 1878.)

Rather interesting that this should be said by a Russian with a German name.

VII

THE RUSSIAN CONQUEST

The Russian princes, Yaroslaf Vsevolodovitch and his son, Alexander Nevsky, did homage to the Mongol khans in the thirteenth century. Timour brought back thousands of Russian slaves after his conquests, and Russia lay under the yoke of the Tartars. The Empire of Asia lasted only a little while in the hands of the dynasty of Tamerlane, and the Uzbek and the Kirghiz Cossacks appeared, waging a holy war for Islam. At the present moment there are one million Uzbeks in the province of Bokhara, three hundred and fifty thousand in Khiva, and five hundred thousand spread over the rest of Russian Turkestan, and a sprinkling in Afghanistan. The Uzbeks formed three kingdoms, Bokhara, Khiva, and Kokand. The Emirs of these states are to this day Uzbeks, but are now little more than Russian civil servants. A dependence of Kokand was Pamir, where the Karakirghiz wandered with their flocks--people now wandering on the Thian Shan mountains in Ferghan and Seven Rivers Land, also in parts of Sirdaria and Eastern Turkestan. The Kirghiz Cossacks came south from what is now the Akmolinsk Steppe in Siberia. This race, a sort of mongrelisation of Huns and Tartars, diffused itself over the whole desert from Lake Balkhash to the Ural. In the seventeenth century they were an organised and powerful nation, with a Khan at Tashkent; but in the succeeding century there was faction and dissension, and the nation divided off into three large hordes. The great horde went to Seven Rivers Land in the Northern Ural, the middle horde to the Steppes of Akmolinsk, and the little horde to Sirdaria and the Ural. From that day their military spirit seems to have steadily waned. To-day they are as peaceful as their herds. During the years 1846 to 1854, the Russians began to penetrate the deserts of Seven Rivers Land and take the Kirghiz over as subjects. There was very little actual fighting till the Russians came into contact with the Uzbeks of Kokand, whom, however, they fought and overthrew with considerable slaughter. Vemey fell in 1854, Pishpek and Tokmak in 1862. Then the Russians turned westward, and took Aulie Ata, Chimkent, and Tashkent. In 1867 Seven Rivers Land was made into a Russian province, and the stream of Russian colonisation turned out of Siberia southward toward India.

One stream of colonists was moving southward from Siberia, another was moving eastward from the Volga. One observes the rise of the Russian power. In the sixteenth century the Russian had begun to take the upper hand, and Kazan and Astrakhan, though predominantly Tartar cities, fell to the assaults of Christian arms. In the eighteenth century the peasant colonists had already come into contact with the Kirghiz Cossacks, and boundary lines had to be drawn. Orenburg fell into Russian hands in 1748, and peaceful penetration followed military success. In 1847 the great horde of the Kirghiz became Russian subjects, and all the races of Central Asia began to talk about the coming advance of the Russians and the need to fight them. The Russian war of conquest was consummated in the East. From Tashkent the Russians proceeded to make war on the Bokharese. In vain did the Emir of Bokhara demand the evacuation of Tashkent by the Russians. In 1866 the Bokharese were defeated at the battle of Irdzhar, and Khodzkent was taken by storm. After heavy fighting with Uzbeks and Turkomans and great slaughter of the Mohammedans, they approached Samarkand, which at last they occupied at the invitation of the inhabitants. In 1868 a treaty was made between the Emir of Bokhara and the Tsar, whereby Samarkand and district passed to Russia.

In 1869 a Russian army crossed the Caspian and laid siege to Krasnovodsk, and attempts were made to push across the desert along the northern frontier of Persia. The Turkomans, however, offered an heroic resistance, and it was not until 1880, when Skobelef was given charge of the task of subduing the tribes, that Russia made progress. At the beginning of December, 1880, the army of Turkestan, under Colonel Kuropatkin, made over five hundred miles progress across the flying sands and took the fortress of Dengil-Tepe. Askhabad was taken, and all the fortified points in Transcaspia. Transcaspia was made into a Russian province in 1881.

In 1884 there was a short struggle, and then the ancient city of Merv fell into Russian hands, and the English began to view the Russian progress with uneasiness. There was even such a word coined as “mervousness,” and Russophobes had Merv on the brain. It must be admitted we were rather backward not to treat with the Russians and obtain definite trade treaties at that time. For we lost and Germany gained a great deal of trade which we might still have retained.

Bokhara and Khiva came under Russian protection. The Central Asian Railway was built, and Russia became the most important Power in the Moslem world of Central Asia, owning as subjects so many millions of Kirghiz, Sarts, Uzbeks, Turkomans, Tekintsi, Tartars, and being neighbours of Turks, Persians, Afghans and what not. Never was such a stretch of territory, so many new subjects, or so much trade and interest won with so little trouble. It was won almost by military processions. It must be remembered that it could not have been held, nor would Russia have any real footing there to-day, but for the peasant pioneers who followed the armies and began settling the land. And the peasants would not have remained if the Government of Russia had not helped them with loans, found them suitable plots for their villages, and irrigated the desert.

Now Turkestan and Russian Central Asia are extremely loyal, peaceful and happy Russian colonies. Rebellion was put down with such severity by the Russians, the defeats were with such slaughter, that the Asiatic tribesmen learned that Russia was too powerful to be trifled with; they knew they had found their masters, and submitted absolutely. The Russians overcowed their spirits, they felt there was some magic power behind them, and that human resistance was vain. Then fear gave way to placid acceptance of mastery, and the Russians began building churches and schools and fortresses and barracks, shops, towns, villages, and no one said them nay. Trade passed into the hands of Russian merchants, and new towns sprang up beside the old ones--new Bokhara beside old Bokhara, new Tashkent beside old Tashkent, and the Moslems saw unveiled the will of God. They could not have been a very warlike people really. They are not like the Mohammedans under our rule or the Turks, though it is quite possible that if, as a result of this war, a great quantity of Armenia and Turkey fell into Russian hands, the Mohammedans there would accept their fate as destiny and settle down to live as peacefully as their fellow-believers of Russian Central Asia. These are meek. During the past winter the Germans have been endeavouring to stir up Islam to fight England, France and Russia. Germany and Turkey have found a common ground. The Arabs in Mesopotamia are fighting a holy war against us. Persia has wavered; there has been ferment in India, there might have been a rising in Afghanistan, but there has been no chance of a rising of those Mohammedans who are Russian subjects. All the aborigines of Russian Central Asia are devoted to peace, and none have any quarrel with the Russian Empire.

Russia, of course, has considerable control over her Mohammedan subjects because of the railways. The development of the lines in Central Asia has undoubtedly been a wise Imperial measure on Russia’s part, and they are the best fruits of her conquest. The construction afforded certain interesting engineering problems, though it may be remarked that Russian engineers generally succeed in building railways over plains, even over deserts, but fail when they come to mountains.

The Central Asian Railway had for its original object the pacification of the Tekintsi, and was a strategic line from the Transcaspian post of Krasnovodsk to the oasis of Kizil Arvat. It was built over the desert, and was at first regarded as of a temporary military character. It cannot now be regarded as a well-built railway, is very loose, and trains are forced to go very slowly, and it is constantly in danger of sand obstruction through storms. In the progress of the military operations against the Tekintsi, Geok-Tepe was stormed in January, 1881, and the first train went through to Kizil Arvat in December of the same year. Kizil Arvat remained the terminus until the fray with the Afghans, on March 30th, 1885, when the prolongation was undertaken seriously. In June, 1885, the Tsar decided to continue the railway towards the frontier of Afghanistan, and by December 11th, 1885, the Russian military railway gangs had taken the rails 136 miles on to Askhabad, at the northern limit of Persia. Merv was annexed, the rails went on to Merv. By December, 1886, the railway had gone on to Chardzhui, on the Oxus. The red river was bridged, and the railway went on to Bokhara and Samarkand. A state service of steamers was started on the Oxus between Chardzhui and Khiva. In 1888 the completion of the line to Samarkand was celebrated, and the railway was consecrated with ecclesiastical pomp. The Russians have always given the impression that they did not intend to develop their railways, and yet they have gone on developing them all the same. They have gone south from Merv to the River Kush, on the Afghanistan frontier, and east from Khodgent to Andigan and Kokand. They have brought a main line from Petrograd, by way of Orenburg, over the deserts of Sirdaria, to the cities of Turkestan and Tashkent, and have thus a railway all the way from the Baltic to within a few hundred miles of India. In February, 1916, trains were first run on the first reach of the new railway that is to join Russia and Western China. It is now possible to go to Chimkent by train, and possibly next year to Aulie Ata. If English were in charge of this territory there would probably be more railways by now. In any case, the chief value of the railways has been the means they afforded of bloodless pacification of tribes. But their future is not so much a military future as one of trade and Imperial development.

Russia has made her Imperial conquests by force of arms, and safeguarded them by railways and colonisation. It should be remembered that before and after and all the time runs the natural stream of colonisation. The ultimate bond of unity is that which comes from the national family ties of colonisation. Nothing stands in Russia’s way, and she is always quietly colonising the empty East.

An interesting yearly chart might be issued by the Russian Government showing the waves of colonisation: the new spots in forests and deserts that have been given names, the new farms, the thickening of the population in the nearer-in districts, the efflorescence of Russian enterprise at the farthest-out points whither they have gone. Several hundred Russian families are settled in Northern Persia, several hundred also in Mongolia and China. The movement goes on, and it is not primarily due to the density of population in European Russia. All Russia, excepting the few industrial regions, is under rather than over-populated. There is plenty of room. Why, then, should Russia increase? or why not? Russia has access to the empty heart of Asia. The old world is hollow at the core, and Russia has access to that great, wide hollowness, stands at the door of it and stares into the great emptiness. Then her people are wanderers; they have the wandering spirit. A cross wind blows over them, and they are gipsies--the roving heart rules the mind. They love the road and the quest. They are seekers. Even the most materialistic of them, the least religious in their outward expression, nourish dreams of success and ideas of golden climes to be found “beyond the horizon.” We should call many of them ne’er-do-wells, though as a matter of fact they are all intent to do well somewhere. They take up farms and give up farms with too little scruple, and then go farther, disgusting the official eye in one district, but knowing they will delight other official eyes farther on when they turn up with carts and cattle and belongings at some verdant, empty wilderness still farther away from the centre of Russia.

VIII

ON THE ROAD

There was some difficulty in getting on from Tashkent. I had two British notes, but no bank would change them. The clerks held the paper upside down, took it to their colleagues, who were supping tea whilst they worked at their ledgers, took it to the manager to show him a curiosity, and finally returned it to me “with much regret.” “Don’t think we are savages,” said one bank clerk, “because we do not accept your money. The fact is, we’ve never seen it before and cannot even read what is written on it.” Another clerk, a sympathiser, advised me that there was an Englishman in Tashkent, a merchant who did much business and had an account in the bank, bade me go to him, for he would know what the notes were worth, and would no doubt accommodate a fellow-countryman. I obtained the address and sought out my compatriot. His name was something like Kellerman--not very promising. Behold one of the funniest Englishmen I ever met--as clear a German Jew as I’d ever seen in my life, scarcely speaking English, and making all the comic mistakes which Germans make with our tongue, a fat, ill-shaven, collarless old man of a greasy complexion, a middleman buying wool and horsehair and oilcakes and seed from the native Sarts and Jews and Tartars and Kirghiz. He professed to be very pleased to meet a fellow-countryman, and to be yearning for his “native land”--“a nice house in Kentish Town, all fog and wet in the streets, a nice fire, pull the blinds down, and read the ‘_Daily Telegraaf_.’” Every night in Tashkent he repaired to the public gardens, took a seat beside the skating rink, and watched the violent whirl of Armenian youths and their lady friends on roller-skates. Each night between ten and twelve Kellerman might be found in his place, chuckling to himself at the sight of accidents. “Causts nawthing,” said he, “and it’s such a pleasure to see other people break their necks or their legs.”

Needless to say, he would not touch my notes; at first thought they might be false, and then offered me three pounds ten each for them. He said he wouldn’t change them, but would be willing to make a deal and treat it as a matter of business. So I had to post my money to Moscow.

The next obstruction was from the police, who doubted whether I had permission to wander about in Central Asia, and it was only after I had myself looked through the books at the police-station that I found my name, almost unrecognisably spelt, in the list of those who had permission. At last I got both my money in Russian change and my _visé_, and was free to go. So I started my long journey from the limits of the railway to the frontier of China.